People are feeling an ever-increasing need to stay "in touch." Among these people are doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, etc. to whom time is money. Also, many of today's workers are perpetually "on call," requiring them to be available at any time.
In response to this need, telephone service providers have developed many different ways of trying to keep people "in touch." People may have a plurality of telephone devices (some wireline and some cellular), and these devices may be all contacted via a single telephone number (see, for example, Harlow, U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,901). Alternatively, many different combinations of voice mail and paging systems are available, wherein a user can dial one number and leave a voice mail message, and then the called party is paged. However, the called party must call the voice mail center, or alternatively an answering service, in order to retrieve messages to find out who is calling, and the calling party must either enter a telephone number or leave a number verbally.
In another form of paging, the calling party dials a paging service number, optionally enters a personal identification number (PIN) of the called party and then enters a number at which he/she may be reached. This number is displayed on an alpha-numeric display on the called party's paging unit. However, the calling party must know the pager number of the called party, the PIN if necessary, must know how to leave a number on that particular type of paging service and, of course, be dialing from a telephone capable of sending dial-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals. In addition, if the calling party chooses to take no action (i.e., does not leave a message or does not page the called party) the called party is not aware that someone tried to reach him/her. Therefore, a problem in the art is that there is no system or method for paging a called party and providing the called party with information about the calling party without several steps being required by the called and/or the calling party.